Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1130–c. 1191) was a French poet and trouvère who invented the Arthurian romance as we know it. His five major romances — Erec and Enide, Cligés, Yvain, Lancelot, and the unfinished Perceval — established the chivalric ideals of courtly love, knightly adventure, and the Round Table that shaped all subsequent Arthurian literature.